A critical review of local and world news. This blog originally commented on the Moncton Times and Transcript but has enlarged its scope.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Jan. 11: Austerity is a crock.

On page 1 of the
Irving press, we learn that 6 to 10 hospitals could be closed as part
of the government austerity plan. Let's see, so far all the austerity
cuts and the discussion of new taxes, have been aimed at the poor and
the middle class. Close hospitals so the poor will have the problem
of longer trips to reach help. Close public schools, fire teachers,
and kick up class sizes. (It's okay. The children of the rich don't
go to public schools. And they don't need hours on a bus each day to
go to school and get home). Fire civil servants who get a scandalous
100,000 a year. But don't touch the wealthy who get millions a year.
(Even though all that money in both cases comes from our pockets.)

I have yet to see a
word in this paper about how the wealthy are going to help balance
the budget.

On A6, there's a big
story (a free ad, really) about a new yoga, dance and fitness place
in town. And that's as good as Section A gets.

The editorial,
again, is all about money. It never shows any recognition that there
are people in this province. This one is another 'shale gas is good
for you' effort. That's the only kind of story editors are allowed to
write. And, hey, renewable energy is decades away, so what the hell;
let the party go on.

And plans for the
development of renewable energy? Don't worry. Lots of time. Lots of
time.

Norbert Cunningham
has a column that says little. It's about the relationship between
politicians and people in this province. And, of course, it pretends
that the only two factors in that equation are elected politicians
and us common folk. Read you own paper, Norbert. Read the column in
which Mr. Irving told us that he, without getting elected, is a
member of the government.

Craig Babstock uses
his 'Commentary' to tells us a pointless story about himself. I
guess he figures we're too dumb to understand anything serious. Steve
Malloy writes a real commentary that is both angry and amusing. Alec
Bruce writes a good column on indebtedness in New Brunswick but,
like everybody in the paper, stops short of discussing the role of
the wealthy in all this.

Canada&World has
4 pages of nothing on either Canada or the world. Oh, it mentions
that Canada has a record number of wildfires in its national parks.
Many scientists predicted this because of climate change. But what do
they know? Let's go for more fracking.

Donald Trump is
making a big fuss because one of his opponents in the Republican
leadership race was born in Canada. (His parents happened to be in
Canada when Ted Cruz appeared. But they were Americans so Ted Cruz,
under American law is American. But not under Trump law.)

The U.S. is up to
its ears in problems of race, of religion, of rising poverty, of
violence and murder on a record level around the country, of the most
heavily armed population in the world, of prisons with more people in
them that in any other country in the world, of a collapsing
education system, of foreign policy disasters that have killed
millions around the world, created tens of millions of refugees who
may well destabilize Europe, in a destabilization that has destroyed
much of the middle east, opening us to the possibility of a
world-wide war within the Islamic faith and has already made it
necessary for Russia to step in and outplay the U.S. for another
possibility of world war, has created mass poverty and instability
across Latin America, that is threatening war against China and
Russia, a U.S. that has effectively destroyed the United Nations, a
U.S. that tolerates an armed rebellion by 150 armed men in Oregon,
and tolerate it because they're good ol' boys – white and
Christian. The whole, American Empire is in danger of collapse.
Worse, we are all in danger of collapse.

And that's not even
mentioning the question of climate change.

But Donald Trump and
his competitors and their hysterical followers don't care about any
of the above. No. The big issue is Ted Cruz. Can someone be born to
American parents in a foreign country and still be American? Yep.
That's the big question, that an bombing Muslim into the earth.

We live next door to
a nation so steeped in propaganda and myth, so badly informed by its
news media, so propagandized, so hog-tied and conformist that it is
no longer capable of seeing any reality. Everything is hysteria and
fear and hatred. It's a little bit late; but this is George Orwell's
'1984'

You can hear the
echoes. Sieg Heil. Sieg Heil.

Hitler was not an oddity in western development. He was a quite
natural evolution of an exploitive society, and of Christians who
had, millenia ago, forgotten the difference between God and country.
Check the Irving press Faith page to confirm that.

Wars never solve
problems.

World War One was
supposed to be the war to end wars. It didn't.

World War Two was
supposed end them, too, with the formation of the U.N. But we are
fighting wars at a greater rate than ever – and the U.N. has been
pretty much destroyed.

World War Two was
supposed to destroy fascism. It didn't. Fascism and Naziism are
enjoying revival in much of Europe. And in both Canada and the U.S.
our political systems are increasingly fascist. In fact, the U.S. is
already there. Here, in New Brunswick, we call it
public/private/partnerships.

Fascism is not just
a dirty word. It means a fusion of government and big business.
That's where Stephen Harper was taking us. And I suspect Trudeau will
try to continue that with the Trans-Pacific trade deal.

There's also a story
much in today's news around the world, but not in the Irving press.
American troops are now in Aleppo. Syria. They're there, with the
help of American bombers. To help Syrian 'rebels' capture it. And
that's a multiple war crime. But nobody in our news media is going to
say that.

There are two
conditions in which it is legal to send troops to another country.

1. The government of
that country has invited you to come in. The government of Syria has
invited Russia. It has not invited the U.S.

2. The government of
that country has attacked or threatened to attack your country. Even
the current state of hysteria in the U.S. would have a hard job
proving that. Not that it matters – because the U.S. would never
dream of going to the UN for approval. And if somebody else did, the
U.S. would veto any criticism.

War crimes are
pretty serious. We hanged Germans quickly enough – and Saddam
Hussein. But nobody on our side has ever been hanged for war crimes.
In fact, only one person has ever even been tried. That was a U.S.
army lieutenant who was tried for murdering every man, woman and
child in a village called My Lai. He was found guilty - and he
served one night in jail.

So, exactly what are
the war crimes here?

1. American troops
are there without even asking for the permission of the government.

2. They are there to
support 'rebels' who are fighting against the government.

3. They are there
without the slightest evidence that Syria has ever done anything to
the U.S.

4. The 'rebels'
exist because the U.S. created and supplied them. And it certainly
did not have the permission of the Syrian government to do that.

5. It's a war crime
because the use of bombers was certainly not requested by the Syrian
government.

6. It's a war crime
because, so far, at least 200,000 people, almost all of them innocent
civilians, have been killed.

Al jazeera has a
story about the failures of the American economy that apply equally
well to New Brunswick. It's gently worded, perhaps too much so. But
it raises serious questions about our own drive for austerity
budgets, and the dangerous gap between the incomes of the very rich
and the rest of us.

It should be posted
in the offices of the Irving press where it could be read (and
explained) to the editors.

Nobody has ever
created general prosperity by hammering the poor and giving the rich
a free ride. You need lots of money in the hands of the general
population. Then you get the money spent locally to the benefit,
especially, of small business.

But small business
has never caught on to that. It likes to think that all capitalists,
big and small, are the same, and all have the same interests. They
don't.

And, though our
Christian world gets regular news whenever one of our churches has
one of those burping sessions they call church dinners, it doesn't
pay a whole lot of attention to Christians in the middle east. We
have to rely on Al jazeera for that.

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About Me

born into poverty in Montreal. (1933 was a bad year to be born.) Kicked out of school in grade 11. Became factory hand, office boy.
Did a general BA, mostly at night at Sir George Williams University, and partly while a youth worker for YMCA, camps, etc. Then teacher training at McGill.
Taught gradea 7 to 11 for six years. Loved it.
Quit to do MA at Acadia, then PhD (History) at Queen's.
Taught history three years at UPEI, then some 35 years at Concordia U in Montreal.
Loved the teaching. Thought the profs had more pompous and useless asses among then than is really desirable outside a zoo.
work experience:
factory, office,social group work, office,camp director, teacher.
Radio - c. 3000 broadcasts, mostly current events.
TV - many hundred appearances, mostly commentaries.
Film - some writing, advising, voice-overs.
Writing - no count, some hundreds. Some academic, but mostly for popular market, and ranging from short stories to stories to newspaper and magazine columns to history books.
professional speaker - close to 2000.
Awards for the above? yep